We have now to consider the probable gain in the number and worth of adult offspring to these favoured couples. First as regards the effect of reducing the age at marriage. There is unquestionably a tendency among cultured women to delay or even to abstain from marriage; they dislike the sacrifice of freedom and leisure, of opportunities for study and of cultured companionship. This has to be reckoned with. I heard of the reply of a lady official of a College for Women to a visitor who inquired as to the after life of the students. She answered that one-third profited by it, another third gained little good, and a third were failures. “But what become of the failures?” “Oh, they marry.”
There appears to be a considerable difference between the earliest age at which it is physiologically desirable that a woman should marry and that at which the ablest, or at least the most cultured, women usually do. Acceleration in the time of marriage, often amounting to 7 years, as from 28 or 29 to 21 or 22, under influences such as those mentioned above, is by no means improbable. What would be its effect on productivity? It might be expected to act in two ways:—
(1) By shortening each generation by an amount roughly proportionate to the diminution in age at which marriage occurs. Suppose the span of each generation to be shortened by one-sixth, so that six take the place of five, and that the productivity of each marriage is unaltered, it follows that one-sixth more children will be brought into the world during the same time, which is, roughly equivalent to increasing the productivity of an unshortened generation by that amount.
(2) By saving from certain barrenness the earlier part of the child-bearing period of the woman. Authorities differ so much as to the direct gain of fertility due to early marriage that it is dangerous to express an opinion. The large and thriving families that I have known were the offspring of mothers who married very young.
The next influence to be considered is that of healthy homes. These and a simple life certainly conduce to fertility. They also act indirectly by preserving lives that would otherwise fail to reach adult age. It is not necessarily the weakest who perish in this way, for instance, zymotic disease falls indiscriminately on the weak and the strong.
Again, the children would be healthier and therefore more likely in their turn to become parents of a healthy stock. The great danger to high civilisations, and remarkably so to our own, is the exhaustive drain upon the rural districts to supply large towns. Those who come up to the towns may produce large families, but there is much reason to believe that these dwindle away in subsequent generations. In short, the towns sterilise rural vigour.
As one of the reasons for choosing the selected class would be that of hereditary fertility, it follows that the selected class would respond more than other classes to the above influences.
I do not attempt to appraise the strength of the combined six influences just described. If each added one-sixth to the produce the number of offspring would be doubled. This does not seem impossible considering the large families of colonists, and of those in many rural districts; but it is a high estimate. Perhaps the fairest approximation may be that these influences would cause the X women to bring into the world an average of one adult son and one adult daughter in addition to what they would otherwise have produced. The table of descent applies to one son or to one daughter per couple; it may now be read as specifying the net gain and showing its distribution. Should this estimate be thought too high, the results may be diminished accordingly.
It is no absurd idea that outside influences should hasten the age of marrying and make it customary for the best to marry the best. A superficial objection is sure to be urged that the fancies of young people are so incalculable and so irresistible that they cannot be guided. No doubt they are so in some exceptional cases. I lately heard from a lady who belonged to a county family of position that a great aunt of hers had scandalised her own domestic circle two generations ago by falling in love with the undertaker at her father’s funeral and insisting on marrying him. Strange vagaries occur, but considerations of social position and of fortune, with frequent opportunities of intercourse, tell much more in the long run than sudden fancies that want roots. In a community deeply impressed with the desire of encouraging marriages between persons of equally high ability, the social pressure directed to produce the desired end would be so great as to ensure a notable amount of success.